


That Would Be Enough

by aeriamamaduck



Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Childhood, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friendship, Implied Sexual Content, Love, Martin is also unaware that Dion and Minerva are cousins, Martin's POV, Mild Sexual Content, Minerva's altruism scares the shit out of Martin, Parent Death, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 03:27:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10234829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeriamamaduck/pseuds/aeriamamaduck
Summary: Five times Martin wants more (and one time he doesn't).





	

1. 

“You’re a night owl, Martin. Always have been.”

He’s twelve when his father says this, a hint of melancholy in the deep layers of his voice. It’s one of the many things causing a rift between them, or else widening it. Martin isn’t sure if there was ever a time apart from his birth when there was no rift.

He’s thirteen and sitting cross-legged on the soft grass growing over his mother’s grave. He tries to remember her features, the straight brown hair framing her long face, the gentle brown eyes soft as satin.

He remembers searching for her in the weeks after her death, remembered his father explaining over and over that she was with the gods now. He wonders if his mother would have understood his confusion, his need to find a place in the world beyond the farm his father’s lived in his whole life and will most likely die in.

Martin shudders in the night air at the thought. It’s not for him to die breaking his back on the fields, not when there’s so much more beyond even Kvatch. The magic humming in his palms is a way out, a way into a guild with others like him. His dreams take him to other places, far from the stifling security of the home his father somehow made a prison.

He stares at the grave bearing his mother’s name, wanting some sort of approval even though he knows he will never get it.

Still, his dreams are an escape until his feet can take him far away.

2.

“You will be careful, won’t you?”

Martin is sixteen and sick of hearing the same thing over and over. “Father, I’m not a child anymore,” he groans. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know that,” his father says quietly, almost reluctantly, and it bothers Martin. He adds, “It’s just…Can you blame me if I don’t want to lose my only son?”

“Who says you’ll lose me?” Martin keeps packing his books and the best clothes he has, aware of just how bare his room began to look. How final his departure was. Martin frowns at the sensation of melancholy. He doesn’t want to miss this place. He’s been dying to leave since he was thirteen.

His father, whose face suddenly looks incredibly lined and older, scratches the side of his neck in thought before saying, “I …I really should tell you something, Martin. You shouldn’t leave without hearing this.”

Martin huffs in exasperation and turns to glare at his father, wishing he’d get to the point. “What, Father? What’s so damn important?”

He regrets his disrespectful tone only for a moment as pain crosses his father’s features, but the older man merely clears his throat and says in a quiet tone, “Just…remember where you came from, son. That’s all I ask.”

Martin has to keep from rolling his eyes, staring at his father before gathering his sack and tossing it over his shoulder. “I have to go,” he says, turning to make his way out of the room and out of the house. “I’ll write,” he says with barely a glance back as he opens the door.

“I love you, Martin.”

It’s a simple utterance, but it’s enough to make Martin forget for a few moments that he wants to be free of this place and be so much more than a farmer. He turns to give his father one last gaze (he’ll never forget the pain in the man’s grey eyes for as long as he lives) and replies, “I love you too.”

He turns and exits the house, his steps taking him to the grave he’d sat by so many times in his youth, confiding in someone he hoped would have understood how trapped he felt.

3.

“What else can I do, Martin?”

He’s eighteen, lying on his stomach on the small bed that somehow manages to hold him and Dion, only because the other man is so thin and lanky and lying on his side. Dion’s long fingers stroke a soothing trail between his shoulder blades.

It’s easy for him to close his eyes and let the sensation carry him away from his thoughts. They’d buried his father a week before and Martin’s walked in a daze since.

They’d argued more often than not during Martin’s few visits to the farm, his father wearing a dispirited gaze whenever Martin finally left, his gratitude at getting away from the farm extremely obvious. He still doesn’t want any of that life, one he’s certain ultimately killed his father. He’s determined not to let it happen to him and he’s sure it won’t. Not in the guild halls.

He has no real answer to Dion’s question. He’s Martin’s closest friend in the guild, sharing a room with him since their arrival at sixteen. Lately he’s been something else; a friend and a warm body to embrace. It was one evening after Martin got back from making love to a pretty Breton girl from Skingrad and spent an hour talking and laughing about girls, boys, the newness of being free to come together in the nights, and Dion suddenly reached over to cup the back of his head to pull him in for a brief kiss.

It lasted a few minutes but nothing came of it until Dion’s parents drowned in Topal Bay a few weeks later. Dion wept in near silence that night and held on to Martin so tightly, entreating fingers combing through his hair until Martin slowly began to take their clothes off.

Somehow it became easier to smirk at the mischief in Dion’s vivid green eyes, knowing there was a minute intimacy there that neither of them shared with the others they spent their nights with.

In a short year they’re both orphaned, and Martin suddenly felt like it was the end of the world. He feels cast adrift, alone, abandoned, even when something else tugs at him, leaving an emotion he can’t hope to identify. He still dreams of open skies, fire and death, Dion’s bright eyes more alert than he’s used to.

“What can I do?” Dion whispers against his shoulder, fingers tracing a scar from a drunken fight with a sailor in Anvil.

Martin sighs, turning to face Dion and run his fingers through his messy black hair. “Think you can manage to turn back time for me?”

Somehow he wants more time. Time to talk to his father without it escalating into raised voices and harsh words. Time to somehow fix everything that had gone wrong.

Dion gives him a sad smile, something rare that Martin swears he’ll remember forever.

4.

It’s a funny feeling, power. No matter how much he learns, Martin wants more.

He feels it when he stands on his feet longer than anyone else. Longer even than Dion. It’s when he can feel the buzz and quaking of pleasure and satisfaction from the writhing bodies around him in an intoxicating medley of wine, skin, sex and blood.

Magic, dark and forbidden, curls around his mind in a way nothing and no one ever had. Comforting as it laid the world at his feet.

His for the taking.

Cup after cup, body after body. He only stops once everyone else lies prone at the statue’s feet, dawn giving rise to the usual aches of the morning, pairs and groups splitting to go on their way. Wide-eyed newcomers gather their clothes and whatever shame they’d discarded the night before, and scurry off home.

All of it makes Martin laugh, and knowing deep in his heart that he’s above it all he craves more of what he knows is his.

 _“Oh, you’re definitely special, Martin. You don’t know just how special,”_ Sanguine tells him with a sly grin.

A woman’s long fingers dance across his back, his flesh burning with pleasure, and in the back of his mind he only thinks of more pleasure and power to be had.

5.

Green eyes, round with trust and dedication, gaze up at Jauffre, and Martin hears the girl swear she will lay down her life for _him_.

The sight of it makes Martin want to ride back to what remains of Kvatch and stay there for the rest of his life, unnoticed and unremarkable. A simple, forgettable priest without a past, without a single drop of royal blood.

For a long time he’s wished to go back to the simple years of his childhood in the farm he’d so despised, to a father who had offered him nothing but guidance and love. How could he have renounced all that was good in his life for the sake of his own greed and lust? Had he stayed, so many others would be alive. Dion, brilliant and ambitious, would likely have succeeded Hannibal Traven himself.

He wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of all those lives on his shoulders.

Minerva Saturnius would only be one more, and worse still she’s _willing_.

She’s young, and he’s seen just how strong and capable she is. Her presence lacks no power, able to draw attention when she wants it. She’s much like Dion in that respect, save for her general lack of cynicism. It doesn’t escape his notice just how eerily similar they look in appearance.

Martin turns away and walks into the temple, unable to bear the thought of anyone else dying for him. Dion, their friends, the poor souls that burned with Kvatch, all of them dead because of him.

Because he was special. Because he was the Emperor’s son.

He’d laugh if he weren’t so weary, because all he wants is to just go back to being a humble farmer’s son.

+1

“You’re staring,” he says with a smile, eyes still on his book as he sits on the edge of the bed, lingering on the kind of reading he actually enjoys doing. He knows the Mysterium Xarxes awaits him, its dangers beating at his head with far more accuracy than anything he’d ever learned under Sanguine’s tutelage.

He can resist. He’s confident of that at least.

Minerva gives a soft laugh, and he feels the sound of it bloom in his chest like nothing else ever had. “I like seeing you wear something other than the cassock.”

He’s opted for a pair of loose trousers and long-sleeved wool shirt, knowing the day would soon come when he’d no longer be a priest, and no longer wear the robes that he’d taken as an outer sign of his guilt, a reminder of the punishment he’d given himself. It feels strange not to wear it after eight years, but without it the future seems more open. He feels like the boy he used to be, without the ungratefulness and prideful ambition.

“I decided it was time to start moving on,” he says to her, looking up just as she sits down beside him, pressing her lips to his jaw. He has to turn to look at her, seeing the promise of a real future together in her lush green eyes.

He sees wistfulness flash across those eyes briefly, and Minerva whispers, “Seeing you wearing that, I can almost pretend there’s no Crisis. We’re living a normal life together.”

It sounds perfect, and Martin wants so much to believe it. He knows it’s not completely possible, fate having singled him out as an Emperor long ago. At least he can include Minerva in that future.

For the first time in his life he wants for nothing else. Simply having Minerva in his life is enough for him.


End file.
